The Ames Community School District has tapped a search firm to help hire a new superintendent
The Ames Community School District has enlisted a search firm to help find its new superintendent.
Current Superintendent Julious Lawson emailed district parents on Jan. 28, announcing his last day with the district will be June 30, ending his two-year tenure.
Lawson took a position with the Zion schools district in eastern Illinois.
The local district is partnering with Hazard, Young, Attea Associates for $15,000 to find a replacement, which the Ames CSD School Board approved on Monday.
HYA is the firm that helped the school district recruit and hire Lawson two years ago. That experience will create a faster search process, Ames School Board Vice President Sabrina Shields-Cook said.
"(HVA's) proposal is for an expedited search process where they took out some of the frontloading part of the search with all the community meetings and things like that two years ago," Shields-Cook said. "We have gathered all that input from stakeholders already, and wanted to be able to hit the ground running on this search without taking a whole lot of time because we really want to get that position posted."
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Search firm will survey community
HYA plans to meet with the school board and survey community and district constituents in the next few weeks. The firm will also assist board members in preparing interview questions and scenarios for first-round interviews in April.
"They felt they would be able to bring us a great slate of candidates in this timeline," School Board President Kelly Winfrey said. "If we don't find a suitable candidate, we can continue in the fall and appoint an interim superintendent."
When HVA worked with the board two years ago, part of their process was to send out a survey for anyone in the community who wanted to respond. The school board debated removing the survey from the search process to trim the firm's fee by $1,500 but ultimately decided to keep it.
"Personally, I don't see any harm in doing the survey," Shields-Cook said. "It would provide people the opportunity to provide additional feedback now from the last two years of things that they see differently, or anything they want to add."
School Board Member Scott Dryer supported the survey, noting how it could reflect a change in opinion.
"I know it's only been two years, but there could be populations that really feel like there's been a lot of change in two years, or that this survey is really important now and wasn't on their radar then," Dryer said.
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Lawson will return to Chicago upon leaving Ames
Lawson began his Ames duties on July 1, 2022.
Lawson was an administrator at the third-largest school district in the United States before coming to the local district, where he served as chief of schools for Chicago’s Network 11. He oversaw 27 elementary schools on the city’s south side, with about 9,000 students and more than 900 teachers and staff.
Lawson will take over as superintendent of the Zion Elementary School District 6, according to the Zion district website. He will begin work on July 1.
The school board is committed to the strategic plan it has created, Winfrey said, which a new superintendent will be required to help follow.
"It is the district and community's strategic plan, and that will be an important part of our search as a board, to find someone that continues to implement that plan," Winfrey said. "Our course is not changing, though we'll have a new person steering the ship soon."
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Celia Brocker is a government, crime, political and education reporter for the Ames Tribune. She can be reached at CBrocker@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Ames CSD hires firm to help search for new superintendent
